Wounds
by Pentheo
Summary: In order to heal you must remember, forgive and forget. A Lucius x Narcissa story based at the beginning of The Deathly Hallows. [ Please review! More chapters will be written if I know this is going somewhere! ]
1. Prologue

The hearth had reduced to spitting embers when the creak of floorboards stirred him from his thoughts. She stood motionless in the doorway, hesitancy holding her firmly to that spot. "What could you possibly have to fear from me?" He asked quietly, his voice a hoarse, cracked thing. She moved closer to the sound of it, light footsteps leading her to the chair by his side, the very spot she'd sat in hours ago. He had not moved when the others filed out and they hadn't a mind to pay the man an ounce of attention at their departure.

Half a life time spent with him hinted it was better to leave him to his thoughts. The Dark Lord may have spared her husband the physical boundaries of a prison but his mind was still wrapped in steel bars. "It is not what I fear from you" She replied softly, taking her place by his side, "But what I fear for you."

His back stiffened at her admission. That the creature by his side could so easily admit fear gave him cause for further despair, she who had suffered so very much at the hands of his own choices.

"He took my wand Cissa.." He croaked, pressing his palms flat against the table.

"Lucius, I-"

"HE TOOK MY WAND!" The man roared, finding his despair giving way to fury.

She did not so much as flinch at her husbands outburst but instead reached out and pressed warm fingertips against the back of his hand. The touch was enough to make him recoil, removing his hands from both the table and her gentle caress to grip the arm rests on either side of him.


	2. Azkaban, again

It was Azkaban all over again. The scenery may have changed but without a wand Lucius found himself as vulnerable, as pathetic as he had been in that place. His wife had not asked and he hadn't the slightest inclination to divulge what they had done to him there. This refusal to utter a single word about his incarceration did not however stop his mind from perpetually looping the experience.

It would have been tolerable had the Ministry still been in control. Playing prisoner to wardens of your cause, whose hate and jealousy need not be kept in order was a different story entirely. Wandless he was at the mercy of the orders given to them by The Dark Lord. At first their curses were greeted with a steely silence, pride forcing the man to bite his tongue till his mouth was full of the metallic taste of blood.

When they returned, a group of four hooded men to use his own wand against him he had writhed and convulsed and still remained silent. Perhaps, he had thought, curled naked against the filthy stone floor, he simply had no voice left in which to scream with. This refusal made them rage and in that Lucius Malfoy found his one and only comfort. Daily ministrations would not make him so much as gasp and for a time the knowledge of their frustration gave him strength.

Death Eaters however were renowned for their cruelty and as the months passed by in a haze of curses and lashings they finally found a way to make the man scream.

"Do you love your wife, Malfoy?" The man spat, kneeling next to the bloodied body of the once proud patriarch. It was a question that needed no answer. Opening his blackened eyes he stared at his captor with a loathing indicative of the reaction his question had sparked, and still, silence.  
Unperturbed by the lack of words, the man continued, "Because I think I could",

Lucius did not need to properly see the man to know that underneath that hood he was grinning.

His mouth bone dry and at first it was hard to find the voice he'd kept hidden for so long. The connotations of his captors threat however had it ripping out of him in seconds.

"You so much as look at-"

"Oh don't you worry Malfoy, there are more than a few pairs of eyes on her. Wouldn't be doing a disservice to the cause now would I? What's a woman without a man", Reaching down a gloved hand grabbed roughly at Lucius' jaw, dragging him up till there was but an inch between their faces, "And you, are not, a man anymore."

That night Lucius was left alone, no amount of torture could invoke the sort of pain his captors words had left him in. A world away from his wife and powerless to stop any harm that might come to her, he'd little choice but to believe that Narcissa was still the woman she had been before his incarceration, that they had not broken her as they had him.


End file.
